Woman gets a Volkswagen GTI in exchange for Szechuan sauce

For the past week, fans of “Rick and Morty” have been discussing nothing else but the return of and subsequent battle for McDonald’s Szechuan sauce. McDonald’s vastly underestimated the sauce’s demand, with angry fans even suggesting filing a lawsuit against the fast food restaurant (crazy, right?). The company issued an apology. A market for the sauce has since developed, with bidding and trading taking place online. Values on Szechuan sauce packets are fluctuating, but it seems we might have seen a new peak. The Drive reports that a woman in Michigan traded a packet of Szechuan sauce for a 2004 Volkswagen GTI. Seriously.

The craze around Szechuan sauce came about a few months ago when season 3 of “Rick and Morty” premiered. The end of the first episode ended in a 30 second rant about a mostly forgotten condiment that McDonald’s released for a short time in 1998 as part of marketing for the Disney film “Mulan.” By all indications, it wasn’t very good. Still, fans went into a fever pitch, prompting McDonald’s to re-release Szechuan sauce. The problem was that individual stores only got a very small amount, leaving most people high and dry.

[embedded content] Rachel Marie was lucky enough to get ahold of a packet of Szechuan sauce. According to The Drive, Marie intended to trade it online for a set of pins. Instead, she was offered a MkIV GTI. It’s a good one, too, with a five-speed manual and Volkswagen’s 20-valve 1.8-liter turbocharged inline-four. This writer was very close to buying a similar car a decade ago.

It’s not clear what state the car is in, but the trade seems to be worth it (unless it needs a new timing belt). Still, congrats to Rachel for cashing out before McDonald’s brings the sauce back in full force sometime next month, tanking the Szechuan sauce market by flooding it with new currency.